


Immaculate

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Force Baby, Gen, Mpreg, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-20 13:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9493967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: The Force conceived Luke's father. Apparently the Force wasn't finished with its work.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



Luke doesn't notice anything unusual at first. Perhaps the food on this planet doesn't agree with him. Perhaps he's more tired than he ought to be. Babysitting takes more energy than fighting his way through a legion of Stormtroopers ever did, and he's been helping Leia and Han a lot these days. Leia's got a new Republic needing her attention. Han's got a ship and the open sky, and dozens of jobs to work. Luke has old holocrons to unravel and old scrolls to read, and old spells to try. He can work on those here as easily as he can anywhere else, and mind the child at the same time.

It's fine. Everything is fine.

Subtle changes over weeks finally catch his attention. Worry sends him alone for his visit to the medical center. Shock closes his mouth when he leaves. His research into ancient Jedi lore yields few clues, a line here and a half-implied reference there. Power. Creation.

The Force conceived his father. Apparently the Force wasn't finished with its work.

Luke has accepted Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader as the same person, two points on a long arc which ended in one act of devotion. Leia sees the man who fathered them as a singular beast, a murderer who tortured her more than once. Luke cannot tell her their painful history stands on the edge of repeating itself. Leia will never, ever understand.

He wraps up his affairs with care. He has research to do, he tells Leia. He'll be in touch, he tells Han. He will be home as soon as he can, he tells Ben. He can't take a droid with him where he's going, he tells Artoo. Lies sit heavy on his tongue. None of them believe him, although pieces are true.

He can't take Artoo with him. Artoo will remember everything.

He will return as soon as events allow.

He'll send letters. He might even tell them which sector he's in, but he doubts he can.

His research leads him to the place he must go if his plan is to work.

This Outer Rim world has a well-established medical community, and they don't blink at Luke's falsified identification. He settles in to a temporary life here, someone unknown, someone not a Jedi or a hero. He takes a job and doesn't make friends because it hurts to let go later, hurts like losing a hand.

Each day, he watches his body change. His skin stretches and swells. Fluids gather and squish as unfamiliar hormones surge through him. Some symptoms he recognizes from when Leia went through the same thing. Other changes mystify him, bring him to the medical center with questions. He can't tell the medical droids about the incantation he made months ago, thinking it was a clever spell for a good harvest. He can say his joints hurt, and he's worried when his vision blurs. They send him home with informational data reels and a patronizing voice from the droid seeing him today.

Luke misses his family, every family he's lost, and throws himself a bit too hard into being the best person he can for this new family. He judges every morsel he puts in his mouth for its nutritional value, knowing the kid he used to be would have turned his nose up at this array of vegetables and bland proteins. He talks out loud in the small room he's renting, using his voice to nurture this strange, wonderful creature growing inside of him. He reads books to her, and plays music to make her dance, even when that hurts. It's all going to hurt, he reasons with himself. Pain isn't evil, it's just part of living.

He wants her to live. He's never wanted anything as much as he wants this. He doesn't know if the Force is pushing his attachment to her, or if that's the flood of chemicals in his brain. It doesn't matter.

The birth is surgical, by necessity. His body has formed an inner sac to hold the growing fetus, has built a cord to nourish her, but has not provided him with any means to deliver her except the expertise of a laser scalpel into anesthetized flesh. As she's wiped clean of the mess and given to him to hold, he wonders what the Force would have done had he not come here.

He kisses her soft head, and he wonders what his grandmother saw when she first looked into the tiny face of her son. Did she love him instantly, just as Luke loves this small girl wriggling with closed eyes? Did Grandmother Shmi have any idea what her child might become? Anakin fell because he lost his mother. Other reasons dragged him down, but her loss was the first.

This girl cannot lose what she never had.

Luke knows nothing about the family who will adopt her, not their names, not even their species. It's better this way.

When the surgical wound has healed, when his body has reabsorbed the fluid and the organ it grew, when he no longer feels like dying whenever he passes by a small child, he packs his few possessions and returns home. No one notices his departure, just as no one cared when he arrived.

"What's wrong?" Leia demands, as soon as she's hugged him hello.

"I missed you."

She doesn't believe him, but it is for her sanity and his daughter's safety that he won't ever tell her. He embraces Han next, and Han can tell the same words aren't a lie, and don't encompass the truth. Ben wants to play.

The years pass.

Darkness sweeps through their lives as he's feared it might, growing under his fond eyes until he can't help but see what's happened despite his best hopes. He flees, not for his own life but for the sake of the people he loves. He wanders from world to world, knowing where his last steps will lead. Once, twice per month he thinks about the child he gave up, and other times for weeks on end he can't think about anything else. If she'd stayed with him, would the danger have passed them by? Would she have turned to evil just as readily?

What did her family name her?

At night, he dreams of sand-blown dunes, and Luke thinks he's reliving the ghosts of his own past. He waits on his ocean-rocked island, seeking knowledge and fearing what he will learn. His dreams are of flying simulators, and Imperial warships left gutted in the desert.

He feels Han's loss on the heels of a great rip in the Force.

When the familiar roar of the Falcon's engines disturb the eternal wash of the waves, he knows. Luke waits for her, overlooking the sea, remembering the past, feeling the ripple of power. He allows her to come to him. He has traveled enough for her sake.

She's beautiful. He can see his mother in her, the face he knows only from a painting Leia found on Naboo. She's got that same strong chin that Luke first saw in a hologram, begging Obi-Wan to save the Rebellion. Destiny rolls off her in waves, a frightening cloak she clearly wishes to shed as she hands over the one possession he thought he'd never see again. His father's lightsaber was once the weapon of another child born of the Force. It must have called to her from beyond the stars, must have burned her hand when she first took hold.

"I'm so sorry," he wants to say, but the words don't come.

They stare at each other. "This belongs to you," she says at last, one more try to surrender what she knows will be her fate.

Luke wraps his hand around hers, feeling the heat of her skin, the beat of her pulse gripping the lightsaber. "No. It's yours now. I'm Luke, but I suspect you knew that." He takes a breath, remembering the scent of her hair the day she was born. "What's your name?"

"Rey."

"Hello, Rey. It's good to finally meet you."


End file.
